Your DPS system has the potential to impact and generate value to many users, across several business entities.
To maximize impact and value, we suggest to segment users into groups based on their objectives and needs.
For this reason we use the concept of Persona (see here a definition: https://servicedesigntools.org/tools/personas).
Identifying and understanding the personas impacted by your DPS system is critical to best configure the Involvement (Alerts and Actions) and User Interface layers.
The concept of Persona can cross multiple business entities. For example the Service Technician persona can work both for an Organization or a Partner.
Business Entities
The main business entities a user can belong to in a typical Servitly DPS system are:
- Organization
- Partner
- Customer
Organization
This corresponds to your corporation. It is the main business entity that owns the DPS systems and that is providing the product-service system.
Sub-organization
Recursively, under an organization, you can have sub-organizations.
For example, if your corporation operates in multiple countries, it likely has a central organization based at its headquarters and subsidiary organizations for each country where it does business. These subsidiary organizations may even be further subdivided into regions.
Partner
If you sell your products and services globally, you are likely to rely on external partners to support your operations: distributors, dealers, technical assistance centers (TAC) or others.
A partner is associated with an organization and has visibility on a set of customers.
Sub-partner
Recursively, under a partner, you can have sub-partners.
For example, if you have a distributor in one country, you may have local technical assistance centers as sub-partners.
Customer
Customers are the entities that own or use your products and are the beneficiaries of your product-service system.
If you sell your products to a distributor or reseller you may consider it a customer. While this is correct from a business point of view, it is not correct from the point of view of your DPS. A distributor must be registered as a partner, and its customers will be registered as customers. In this case we could further specify that these are “end customers”.
Help Center: Business Entities
Personas
The personas a user can correspond to in a typical Servitly DPS system are:
Personas inside organization and partner entities
Service ManagerService TechnicianSales Account ManagerPersonas inside the organization entity
Product R&D ManagerPersonas inside the customer entity
Operation ManagerOperatorInternal Maintenance Technician